


stained silks and a crown of thorns

by Jace_Diaz_Of_Hell



Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: F/M, pre-veils, tw for abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-11 02:58:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15963248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jace_Diaz_Of_Hell/pseuds/Jace_Diaz_Of_Hell
Summary: before Jace was the archduchess of hexelshire, she was in love.





	stained silks and a crown of thorns

It didn't go that different.

 

Stel left on Jace's birthday, and Jace fell- into cheerleading, off a pyramid, in love with Luke.

 

Jace journaled every single day, letters that her older sister would never read. ( _ Or so she thought. Later, when it was all over, Stel would read every entry.) _

 

When things got bad, Jace cracked open her journal.

 

~~_ December 1 _ ~~

 

~~_ Stel, last night I did something and Luke- _ ~~

 

~~_ December 1 _ ~~

 

~~_ I've never seen him so angry, I don't know what I- _ ~~

 

~~_ December 1 _ ~~

 

~~_ Why did he hurt me? It's not like I did anything wr _ ~~

 

_ December 1 _

 

_ Luke hit me last night. I upset him more than I realized. I should probably apologize- I did make it so he'll be late getting his mother a gift. _

 

Jace grew paler, colder, a shadow of herself. She took to wearing long sleeves and foundation, never letting her hair up enough to display the vaguely handprint shaped bruise that was usually on the back of her neck.

 

It didn't go that different.

 

When Nico started having dreams- wonderful dreams where his family was still a family, where Stel was there and Jace wasn't a living, breathing ghost- the only one around enough to voice concern was Milo.

 

Nico vanished one day in July, just after his fourteenth birthday, the only remnant of him a rag doll that was found on the end of his bed.

 

Jace snapped out of her self-imposed isolation enough to blame herself, enough to feel remorse, enough to not jump every time Luke wanted her.

 

Jace expected Luke to be angry. She expected him to hurt her, to leave more bruises.

 

Luke did the exact opposite.

 

He held Jace when she heard fireworks go off and burst into tears, thinking of her baby brother. He whispered to her that it wasn't her fault, and he followed her when she leapt through portals into other dimensions, hoping Nico would be waiting on the other side.

 

Jace fell in love with him all over again.

 

And Stel, after almost a year of being gone, returned home.

 

In a different world this confrontation would have happened immediately. Jace would have almost slit her own throat without wanting to, and a scream would have split the air, making Luke fall to his death.

 

This was not that other world, and fate wasn't so kind to her.

 

They found Nico, and Jace had left Luke behind with a kiss and a promise to return home.

 

She returned as promised, a shaking Nico in tow who kept running his hand over his closed eyelids as though he couldn't quite believe what had happened.

 

For her welcome home gift, Jace got a black eye and bloody nose.

 

Afterwards, when Luke held her in the back of his car and whispered how much he loved her, how scared he had been, how she  _ couldn't ever  _ leave him like that again or he'd die, Jace closed her eyes and tried to feel something other than numb.

 

Stel didn't like this boyfriend of her sister's. She didn't like how Jace cringed away from contact these days, or the panic that filled Jace's eyes when she couldn't get in touch with Luke.

 

Luke, for his part,  _ hated  _ Stel. He disliked most of Jace's family, preferring it to be just the two of them, but hated Stel especially. Hated the fact that she eyed him with suspicion, and the way Jace spoke of her- a quiet, steadfast love in her voice.

 

Jace hated the fact that they couldn't get along. Here were two of the most important people in her life, and she couldn't make them get along.

 

She also didn't like that she had to work harder to hide her bruises around Stel. Her sister had taken one look at Jace, at the black eye Luke had given her, and Jace had seen suspicion of the truth welling in her eyes.

 

It didn't go that different- just a girl lying in bed, dissolving into a living ghost. Just a girl, tracing outlines of bruises on her hips in the darkness and wishing she could disappear.

 

It went different.

 

The first time that Jace came home, her cheek a bloody mess, Stel was there.

 

Stel stayed silent while their Mother cleaned Jace's face and fussed over the not-quite-deep cut that ran along her cheekbone.

 

When Jace said her lie-  _ oh mama, you know how clumsy I am, I fell on a rock at the beach and Luke drove me straight back home-  _ Stel said exactly one word, when the Queen had left and Jace had been sucked back into the horrors of her own mind.

 

“Bullshit.”

 

Jace hardly even heard her, but each time she came home with a new bruise, she threw up illusions that made her skin bare, the normal tan tones she knew from Before.

 

It didn't go so different- Jace's world kept shattering inside of her, over and over and over again. Jace came home with a neck brace-  _ I fucked up in cheerleading-  _ and a broken arm-  _ I fell down a flight of stairs. _

 

_ ( _ That hadn't exactly been a lie. She  _ had  _ fallen- after all, when someone pushed you, you would fall.)

 

Jace went to sleep and went to the Dreamlands, and woke up with blood staining her sheets and covering her throat and the guarantee of nightmares to come.

 

Jace dragged her bedding down to the laundry, throwing them in the wash herself. She watched the blood wash away with the suds and closed her eyes, the night flooding back to her all over again.

 

( _ Knife at her throat, Luke's eyes turning black, the quick jerk of his wrist, blood everywhere, “oh God Jace I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please stay with me, I love you, I love you so much-” _

 

_ She was slipping away, dying in the Dreamlands and dying in the real world and Luke whispered spells frantically. Jace woke up with a choked scream, feeling her slit throat knit itself back together. _

 

_ In the dreamlands a girl made of nightmares watched from where she hid and a librarian panicked about the vanishing of a powerful magic tome.) _

 

She stood and left the laundry room.

 

It went different.

 

When Jace took a dagger in Mewni and carved her forearm open, whispering pleas to the cold voice in the back of her mind she knew was Luke, Stel was still there to rip the dagger away.

 

But this time, Stel listened to Jace choking on her sobs of  _ it wasn't me, it wasn't me, I didn't want to. _

 

Stel listened and Stel saw the bruises on Jace's arms and Stel  _ knew.  _

 

She pushed and the whole story fell out of Jace's mouth, and partway through Luke forced his way back into her mind and made her carve a heart into her other arm.

 

Stel would have killed Luke where he stood. She would have torn his throat out with her bare hands, but Jace seized her arm.

 

Jace told Stel how much she loved Luke and how much Luke loved her. She told Stel that she  _ deserved  _  the marks on her arms and that if she could just stop fucking up so much Luke would stop hurting her.

 

Stel looked into Jace's eyes and saw how much she  _ meant  _ what she said, and Stel knew she had to go the quieter approach.

 

She lied and told Jace she understood and watched her face break with relief. She bandaged Jace's arms and she brought her home.

 

She waited until Jace, exhausted, fell asleep, and then cast a spell to make sure she would stay that way.

 

And then she climbed the stairs to her parents room, where they were sitting in bed reading, and Stel told them everything.

 

* * *

 

 

The day Jace's world changed for good, she had no idea.

 

She had been trying to get ahold of Luke to figure out when he would come by that day, and each and every text had failed, so she finally gave up and called him.

 

Just as the phone gave a flat  _ the number you are looking for has been disconnected,  _ Stel entered the room with her parents in tow.

 

Her father was oddly quiet, her mother pale.

 

Jace knew what was coming and she turned to face Stel, fear rising in her eyes.

 

“You  _ told  _ them?”

 

Stel looked neither guilty or apologetic.

 

“I had to.” She said bluntly. “He would have killed you, Jace.”

 

Jace swallowed back her  _ he almost did,  _ and shook her head vehemently.

 

“No. Luke wouldn't. He loves me.”

 

“He  _ loved  _ you!?” Jace's father said, his voice incredulous. “Jace, he just forced you to cut open your own arms! Someone who loved you wouldn't force you to do that!”

 

“That was my fault.” Jace said, and suddenly realized how  _ weak  _ that sounded, how it didn't make sense to anyone but her. “If I can just be  _ better,  _ he'll stop hurting me. I know he will.”

 

“Well, we're  _ not  _ giving him a chance to see if that's true. He's gone.” Jace's mother said, with a tone that said  _ that is final. _

 

Fear overwhelmed Jace, who shot to her feet.

 

“What did you  _ do  _ to him!?” She demanded, and her father's eyes glowed red.

 

“That  _ bastard _ is lucky he's not dead for doing what he's done to you! He's  _ lucky  _ he's only banished!”

 

“You  _ exiled  _ him?” Jace said, her legs feeling weak. “Where did you banish him off to!? He must be  _ terrified _ , how could you send him off like that!?”

 

“Because he hurt you!” Jace's mother snapped. “He hurt you, and he could have killed you yesterday, and I won't give him the chance to! You are never going to see him again!”

 

“Mom, I  _ love  _ him!” Jace said, tears gathering in her eyes.

 

Stel spoke then, and it cut off any argument Jace could have made.

 

“Jace, I  _ know _ you love him. And you're probably right. He probably loves you in whatever twisted way he can. But he's abusive.”

 

* * *

 

 

It didn't go that different.

 

Jace tried to patch herself back together. She got back into cheerleading and photography, and her first photo of a person after Luke was her mother.

 

At night she woke up screaming, and her sister would burst into the room when she heard it, and Jace dissolved into tears.

 

She whispered sometimes during these crying fits.

 

( _ Stel, what has he done to me, why did he do this? I am ruined, I'm broken, he has ripped the best of me away and taken it.) _

 

It didn't go that different.

 

Just a girl, trying to sew her life together again, digging her nails into her scars and trying to feel numb.

 

It went different.

 

She never met her daughter who lived and breathed nightmares, who had terror woven in her DNA and despair hidden in the dark curls of her hair.

 

She never died in the real world as the boy she loved woke up, and she never came back to life because she was already alive.

 

Jace pieced herself together one shattered fragment at a time. She graduated, watched Milo graduate, watched as he promised the rest of his life to the boy he loved.

 

She swore to herself she'd go through her life with her eyes wide open, because these were the things worth loving:

 

The ways Nico slowly changed, adjusting to his new powers and finally feeling like he fit his own skin.

 

The way Trixie signed too fast when emotional, how she could convey a world of emotion in her smile, how she sat so close to Uma’zhar it was difficult to see where she ended and her girlfriend began.

 

The way her parents loved each other- fiercely, casually, soft touches on the shoulder and long nights talking.

 

The way Milo stepped on to the stage, a different character each time, how he could make a room laugh or cry with just one line.

 

The way Stel adjusted to being a demon, the grin she got when she summoned a ball of flames for the first time. Her fierce affection for her family and equally fierce suspicion of outsiders.

 

And, one night, when they were watching Coco, Jace felt more herself than she had since she was fifteen, felt like she was finally going to be okay.

 

When her mother said “Before I forget, we have a Council meeting tomorrow. You kids are required to be there.” Jace nodded and tucked her feet underneath her, watching Miguel save Hector on screen.

 

It was about to be different. 


End file.
